25 November 2004

TREVOR JONES:First day. Fridays seem to be a busy day for us. Work often ties me up Monday through Thursday, so it could be another album of long weekends. I live west of London so need to drive the M25 to get to the studio. This can be a trail with all the Heathrow road works, but it's also a productive time for me; on the way to the studio, I can routine the songs in my head, think about arrangements, some of the most major changes are made to a song just before its recording, it kind of forces your hand. The first day of recording is always a happy time for me. There's nothing more exciting than a blank piece of paper, the possibilities are endless. I get to articulate all the stuff that I've been storing up. Marcus's studio is built onto his family home near Crystal Palace in South London. I get there mid-morning and after much caffeine and gabbing, Marcus and I convene to the studio where we chat about ideas for new recordings. Generally, I'll present Marcus with the bones of a song, on acoustic guitar, we'll record a guide guitar or piano for me to sing against, and I'll do the vocal. This is a process that has served us well. I think that, because we commit the finished vocal to tape first, it means that any arrangements must be sympathetic to that vocal, putting the voice, and ultimately the song, stage centre. We tend to do 3 vocal takes, find the one that we like the best, and 'comp', taking lines that may be better, from the other two takes. It focuses me as a singer, and disciplines the process. There's always room for improvement, but you can try too hard, and where and when do you stop? Often the first take, like the first thought, is the best. Sometimes Marcus will present me with a musical piece/sketch and I'll run with that, give it a vocal melody and lyrics, and maybe add a section. That's how 'Bourbon Sky', 'Local Knowledge', 'Weatherwise', 'Dust...' started out. Once the basic vocal take is there we'll talk about arrangements. I think that we are both pretty instinctive, so it doesn't take long for us to fix on a route and follow it. First song up is 'Hey Light of Day'. I normally sit on songs for a while, editing, fine tuning, deciding if they're any good, but this one popped into my head a couple of days ago, complete with lyrics, and has been nagging ever since. I'm sure I must have nicked it from somewhere. It's about the "benefit of hindsight". Had some trouble with my falsetto, up the dusty end (it's been a while!) but think we got it. We'll leave it and revisit later. Next we do a little acoustic thing that I've had for a while. Was called 'Olly in' but may now be 'Quad'. It concerns that playground moment in childhood, that we've all suffered, when you’re against the wall and picking teams, praying not to be the last one off that wall. They don't do it anymore... too cruel... but I know that it's a defining moment in a lot of childhood memories. I play my John LeVoi acoustic. I love it, with it's tiny body and dull sound. It's just as well that we don't need a bright tone, as my acid sweat seems to kill new strings after 10 or 15 minutes. Marcus is alwaysfollowing me around with 'Fast Fret' and a duster! Do the twiddley bits and vocal. We think that upright bass might be nice on this. We call it a day and open a nice bottle of red. It's been a good start.

MARCUS CLIFFE: it's true I'm afraid! Trev can pick up a guitar and in 10 minutes the strings are dead. I did make him put new strings on though when we started recording today but they were shot by the end of the day. I recorded the guitar with an AKG 451 E into an SPL gold mike valve pre, straight into the lynx with no compression. The vocal was recorded with a Rode classic mark 1 valve mike set to cardiod (a fantastic hand built Australian behemoth of a microphone)into the Spl, again no compression was used.

Intro /25 Nov 04 / 26 Nov 04 / 9-10-13-15 Dec 04